The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do

EHR’s not working for patients

KEY TAKEAWAY: Patients are not happy with EHR’s and for good reasons. The “promise” of EHR’s has not been fulfilled for patients and they don’t understand why they even exist in some cases.

Spent the day yesterday in some research on EHR’w for a client. I didn’t expect “anger” and “frustration” I heard from our panels. They don’t like them, in their current form, and want changes to be implemented quickly. Here are the key takeaways:

1ne: Patients want all their healthcare providers to have access to one record. In other words, one EHR for one patient shared by doctors so they don’t have to manually request health records to carry from one doctor to another. This was by far the number one complaint.

2wo: When HCP’s respond to a patient email they want to receive and read that email in THEIR own email. They don’t want to have to log onto a health portal to read and send emails to their doctor.

3hree: Lost password/email recovery is a nightmare for some patients.

4our: Reminders of appointments should ne integrated within calendar’s.

5ive: Public health records, like Microsoft Valult, have little use because it doesn’t integrate with patient EHR’s.

6ix: Another big complaint is the updating of patient portals that require patients to relearn navigation.

By far the biggest advantage for patients was the use of email, but they would use it more if they didn’t have to enter a patient portal.